Artist Database

KILLALY, Alicia

Born

London, Ontario, 1836

Died

Grantham, Lincolnshire, England, 1908

Biography synopsis

An amateur watercolour painter, Alicia Killaly was best known for her views of Toronto, Quebec City and the Niagara region and small oil studies after subjects by Cornelius Krieghoff, with whom she may have studied. She is also thought to have produced the scenes depicted in "A Picnic at Montmorency, " a set of lithographs published in 1868 (they are signed A.K.). Depicting the winter adventures of Captain Busby and Miss Muffin, these genre scenes grant the viewer a humorous glimpse into nineteenth-century life in lower Canada. The watercolors upon which these prints were based are now in the Royal Ontario Museum. Although born in Ontario, Killaly lived in Quebec City and Montreal during the 1840s and 50s, moving to Toronto in 1855. She settled in England after her marriage to Christopher H. Turnor, retired Lieutenant in the Prince Consort's Own Rifle Brigade in 1871.

Media used

Painting

Watercolour

Education

Private study (under Cornelius Krieghoff)

File & Archive locations

Canadian Women Artists History Initiative Documentation Centre, QC

Library and Archives Canada / BibliothÃ¨que et Archives Canada, ON

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Writings about

Allodi, Mary. Canadian Watercolours and Drawings in the Royal Ontario Museum. Toronto: Royal Ontario Museum, 1974.

Cavell, Edward and Dennis Reid. When Winter Was King: The Image of Winter in 19th Century Canada. Banff: Altitude Publishing and Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies, 1988.

Spendlove, F. St. George. "The Quebec Prints and Water-Colours of James Pattison Cockburn (1779?-1847)." The Face of Early Canada: Pictures of Canada which have helped to make history. Toronto: Ryerson Press, 1858.